She blinked at the General as she did not argue with the General and stood up to take a seat between the two people as the General explained as to hows and why.

"Lieutenant, I don't know how they do it where you come from, but a Sergeant Major technically outranks a Lieutenant, and, as such, Sergeant Taft was the ranking officer before I came into the room. Please remember that for future reference, and, if you feel that you need a refresher in which ranks are your superiors, please make some time to go see Major Davies."

Sofia wanted to state something, but did not out of respect for the people in the room and she was going to serve with. Sofia listen towards the question that was stated by the General and kept her hands together while waiting for the Sergeant Major to reply.

"Little off the top of my head. Temperate, humid, forested, and occupied... under dispute if I remember correctly, sir. I believe the standing order was to sit back and observe until the situation developed."

That sounded like a holiday for Sofia and made a smile a bit. The waiting game was something that she was good at in this situation.

Another smirked threatened her otherwise passive countenance,the SgtMjr was stating it how it was, something Mere had a great respect for. She'd served with him enough to assess that he wasnt one for fancy talk, or a man gifted with a tactful tongue.

Blissfully saved by the door opening, Mere shot up like a bottle rocket and saluted, back straight and eyes forward to the General. Waiting for Taft to retake his seat, she dropped back into hers a split second later, shuffling minutely to allow the Lt to slot into the space to her right.

The correction in placement at the table was neutrally given, but the message was clear, inwardly Mere felt a slight sting at the memory of all the redressess she'd ever been subject to. It wasn't pleasant, but it was necessary. Without structure or rules, the world didn't work.

She turned her attention outward again and listened to Taft's description of the gateworld. 'Underdispute', and the whisper the team was late for their scheduled check in, added to the potential for a fire fight and injuries. Which would explain why she was here.

Most of the time, Josephine didn’t set out to be late to any sort of meeting or get-together. Being tardy intentionally struck her as a passive-aggressive way of telling whoever you were late to meet with that they can go straight to hell for all you care. Thus was her worry that other people would perceive her showing up late to anything as that very sort of thinly veiled insult, a danger even greater in the military than in any comparatively laid-back job she had held before joining the Army.

Little surprise could therefore be expected at how embarrassed Joey was feeling as she rushed off to a briefing she was already late to. The notice that she was to attend this meeting had come quite some time ago, in order to make sure the captain had plenty of forewarning about it, but a previous session of testing on one of the components being developed for an experimental energy weapon had gone on just long and intensely enough for her to lose track of the time. Now she was running through the corridors of the SGC, hastily straightening out her ACU and mentally trying to craft an explanation that wouldn’t get her booted down to some position in the janitorial department.

Nice work of self-sabotage there. All this time and effort trying to get a position on an SG team, and now she may very well have ruined it before even getting assigned to a team. A few more strained curses dashed through the engineer’s mind as she arrived outside the briefing room, taking just a few more seconds to get the last wrinkles out of her uniform before heading inside. The designation of the planet being discussed happened to catch her ear as she stepped inside, and despite her lateness, the captain couldn’t resist piping in.

“Under dispute now, and has been since we launched a rescue mission there,” Joey said with only the slightest hint of trepidation before approaching General Hammond and trying to show at least a modicum of respect for regulations with a salute and upright posture. “Sir, Captain Josephine Davidson, reporting as ordered.”

She tried not to wince while steeling herself for the inevitable chewing-out.

Of course, the knowledge of the planet in question was sketchy, at best, and Hammond nodded slowly, his chin trapped between two thoughtful fingers. None of them had been on the mission to P8X-873, so why should he expect them to know anything more than the merest crumb of information? Of course, everyone knew of the death of Jackson's wife, but still... the planet designation was just another set of letters and numbers.

About to continue, the fourth member of the team finally made it to the briefing. Of course, she had been summoned somewhat after everybody else. He nodded at her salute and introduction, smiling just the tiniest little bit at her awareness of P8X-873. "Take a seat, Captain," he said, nodding to the line of people to his left. "Sergeant Blake, if you'd be so kind..." He gestured down the table again, indicating that she should move down a seat to accommodate the higher ranked soldier.

"Now, as I was saying... SG-13 are four hours late, and we have reason to believe that something may have happened to them." As if on cue, Major Davies exited Hammond's office, looking a little flustered, and passed mission files around. Hammond opened his, and nodded to Davies as an indication he should disappear. "Now, if you could all read the dossier, then I'll address any questions or concerns."

Taft watched the fourth person come in, then the Major do his tap dance, then returned his attention to the General. He flipped open his dossier while waiting for the General to speak of the situation at hand. Then Taft read through the personnel list for the other team. "Major Bates is no slouch, sir. They might be stranded, cut off, but they'll be alive. We should be able to get out there, break 'em loose, and come home. Burn our way out, the snake brains will hate it. Hoorah." He gave a grim smile.

P8X-873, Sofia wonders about the name, why did it ring a bell. She then noticed the late coming Captain and smirks a bit. Well it can happen to come in late, plus she saluted towards the General. Out of formality she saluted the Captain and let her sit down next to her.

"Now, as I was saying... SG-13 are four hours late, and we have reason to believe that something may have happened to them." "Now, if you could all read the dossier, then I'll address any questions or concerns."

She looked at the file seeing Dr.Jackson name and blinks, yea now she remember the location. Quite a hostile place. The question for her is the why, why send in a team of Archaeologist with limit fire power, even with Bates and Stevens in it. Sofia shrugs a bit and let the Sergeant Major talk first and letting him point out some obvious points.

"Major Bates is no slouch, sir. They might be stranded, cut off, but they'll be alive. We should be able to get out there, break 'em loose, and come home. Burn our way out, the snake brains will hate it. Hoorah."

"The question is, how are we going in? Quiet or loud?"

"Permission to speak freely sir" Sofia asked the General as she looked at him "That would not be the formal questions sir" she addresses Taft "Because going in quiet would be a tactical advantage, but at the same time it might as well be expected. Stevens and Bates are experience in their fields, but if I might be rude to ask. Why send in such team when we know the situation on that planet is struggle between two lords?"

The thundering entrance of another fatigue clad individual pulled Mere’s attention from Taft’s description of the planet. She seemed genuinely embarrassed at arriving later than the rest, but she was respectful about it at least.

Standing when asked, Mere slid down a space, nodding her head and offering a small twitch of the lips to the Captain who took her spot. She didn’t look familiar in the slightest, but with so many people coming and going in and out of the gate, arriving from other assignments to the S.G.C, it wasn’t easy to memorise every face.

She turned her attentions back to the General who confirmed suspicions. SG – 13 were late back, which in itself could be completely innocuous, was it not for the fact that the world they were visiting was in the midst of a power struggle.

Taking the file handed to her Meredith browsed through it, everything seemed normal enough; check in’s as expected, then sudden silence. Alarmingly a UAV hadn’t seen anything of note, or much of anything at all.

The absence of anything in this situation was little comfort, after all no bodies meant they could well be alive and dandy, holed up somewhere taking fire but A Ok otherwise. Or it could mean horrific massacre and the Goa’uld have decided to tidy up after themselves.

Thinking optimistically Mere focussed on the option 1, or a variation thereof. She knew Stevens, he had a steady nerve and a indecipherable poker face. Nodding in agreement at the SgtMjr’s assessment on Major Bates skills, she allowed herself the comfort that he was in agreement that the group were likely still alive.

She cast her attentions up the table as d’Aufai raised a fair question. The planet was commonly known to be hot, and the team manifest showed remarkably little fire power being sent. Granted a smaller team would have attracted less attention from any passing patrol, but it did seem a little off balance given the territory.

Still, it wasn’t her place to be questioning team structures: that was far above her pay grade. Instead she was here to ensure that when they found the team, and she was in no doubts that they would be found, that the all assemble would be bought back, preferably in as few a pieces as possible.

Well, that was a whole lot less chewing out than she had expected. Relaxing slightly as Hammond motioned for her to take a seat and nobody seemed particularly resentful about her being late, Joey quietly sat herself down and listened closely to the General’s overview of their mission. It was nothing especially fantastical, by the standards of the SGC--maybe what could be defined as typically dangerous, really.

An SG team gone missing in a shooting war between Goa’uld sounded like the sort of thing that just sort of explained itself: they went in do some scouting, got discovered, and got cut off from the gate. Looking at the dossier, she could already foresee a tense, dirty SAR op deep into enemy territory that would at least have some predictability to it. The details were bound to change on the fly, of course, but chances were there was plenty of shooting up Jaffa and sneaking around Goa’uld positions in their immediate future.

That was reassuring, in an odd way. Yes, worming around a warzone like this was why she could never get a decent life insurance policy, but there was comfort in the familiarity of their opponents. That was always a step up from dealing with some totally unknown, alien force that they’d never even encountered before. Kind of a relief, in fact.

She kept an ear up as a conversation developed, silently mulling over everything in her head. That a primarily non-military team had been sent on recon didn’t surprise her as much as it might have surprised the others; as limited as their manpower was compared to the amount of work to be done, sometimes teams just had to go outside their speciality. Speaking of which, wasn’t 13 a… yes, they were, actually.

“SG-13 is officially designated as a Survey and Covert Ops team,” she seamlessly dropped in her own response to the lieutenant’s question. ”A little reconnaissance wouldn’t be outside their realm of operations. Besides, I’m pretty sure SG-1 and SG-3 didn’t get a chance to do any archaeological surveying during the rescue mission there, and 13 has three eggheads who’d love to make up for that missed opportunity a little bit while skulking around.”

Hammond leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table in front of him as he threw the floor open to the team to discuss the upcoming mission. Time was of the essence, so a basic plan of action needed to be put in place with all due expediency, but he needed to know that this new team would be able to function together as a unit before he was able to let them out into the field together.

After all, he didn't want another team going missing.

He shrugged as Sergeant Taft seemed to be questioning him on overall approach. "You're the team leader, Sergeant, so do what you do best... lead." He frowned, though, at d'Aufai's seeming dismissal of the specialists' ability to defend themselves. "All three of the civilians are not only the best people for completing the survey we require, but all have also passed their firearms' tests. Doctors MacDonald and Wills, in particular, have acquitted themselves well. If we had had any doubts about their fitness for that particular mission, Lieutenant, they would never have gone through the gate."

Hammond nodded at Davidson. "And that is exactly why the survey went ahead. The Jaffa camps are no less than thirty klicks from the gate, and have been concentrating on shoring up their own positions, rather than keeping an eye on the gate activity, so, comparatively, this should have been a walk in the park." Of course, all terminology was relative. He cocked his head at Blake, wondering why she was staying so quiet. From what he had seen of her before, she was usually forthright.

"Well, my wishful thinking aside, our best bet is to tread softly until we know the disposition of our comrades and the enemy in relation to the same. If they're badly injured we won't be doing ourselves any favors by announcing our presence, or theirs, before we can haul them back to the gate." Taft nodded to himself, already working out the details and logistics of going into the unknown. "Everybody carries a full med kit, night vision, and we go full camo. After dark if we don't have to wait too long for sunset. Efficiency will be the word of the day."

"I'll take some ordinance with me, just in case we need to alter the situation remotely. Do you want us to retrieve the UAV, sir?" He added, trying to decide if that would go first or last if the answer was in the affirmative. Easier and more likely a success if they immediately dialed back and tossed the thing through before embarking on the search and rescue portion of the mission.